Busy executives typically have many calls to make to conduct their business and telephone tag is a well known problem in telecommunications. Alice calls Bob, only to get his voice mail or a busy signal. Bob then calls Alice back at some point later, only to get her voice mail. This process may continue for hours, days, or even weeks, until finally one party gets through to the other or the attempt to communicate with each other is just abandoned. This process may continue even though there were numerous times where both were free to talk.
In the hectic business and personal world of today, with many people to talk to and hardly any free time to do it, this problem has grown even more complex. Coupled with the proliferation of multimedia devices and mobile cellular phones and digital assistants, some of which are capable of not only voice but also data and video, finding time to communicate, determining a suitable modality, and prioritizing from among all of the requests can be extremely difficult.
Presently, a calendaring system may be used to arrange a time to make a call. Assistants to each party may coordinate a planned time for the call. Then, at the planned time, one party calls the other. However, there is no manner for knowing if one party is not still on another call, if one party is not at his/her desk, of if one party is out of the office for the day. The calling party may call at the planned time and get a busy signal or voice mail.